liquid assets

Build Empathy Across Organizational Levels Through Hands-On Collaboration

Liquid Assets perfectly simulates the real challenges organizations face every day. Difficult problems requiring innovative solutions, demanding customers, tight timelines, communication struggles, and limited budget and resources all serve as obstacles to finding success. Explore your team’s process in a fun and enlightening way!

how liquid assets works

Liquid Assets is a business simulation that creates a fun—and assumption-questioning—experience examining the challenges managers and team members face across organizational levels. Through this immersive team building activity, participants develop deep understanding of personal leadership regardless of title or responsibilities. In just a few hours, your group experiences the power of a unified team aligned and focused toward one goal: delivering a valuable liquid product to market within an ambitious timeframe.

Executives, middle managers, and production teams operate as one organization working to extract, transport, and deliver colored water from dispersed work sites through hidden paths using cans, ropes, inner tubes, rubber tiles, and walkie-talkies. Production teams solve complex problems acquiring and transporting materials through a force field circle. Resources are negotiated through the chain of command—and managers, not surprisingly, find themselves caught in the middle. Through four simulated quarters with a facilitated mid-point process break, teams practice organizational alignment, cross-functional communication, and strategic planning under realistic pressure.

The simulation culminates in delivering a final product where the customer sample—a mix of water from each work site—must match the specified color. Our facilitators guide a comprehensive debrief connecting simulation experiences to real workplace dynamics, exploring how communication patterns, assumptions, and leadership emerge at every level. Teams leave with genuine empathy for challenges across the organization and practical insights they apply immediately to improve collaboration and results.

what teams experience…

  • Resource Negotiation – Work through chain of command to acquire limited resources under budget constraints

  • Strategic Planning – Coordinate across organization to meet customer specifications and delivery deadlines

  • Empathy Building – Build understanding and appreciation for challenges faced at each organizational level

  • Organizational Alignment – Practice generating alignment across dispersed teams, management levels, and functions

  • Cross-Functional Communication – Navigate communication challenges between production teams, middle managers, and executives

  • Leadership Across Levels – Discover how personal leadership emerges regardless of title or position

why liquid assets works…

  • Creates visceral understanding of organizational dynamics through hands-on experience

  • Questions assumptions about how different levels experience the same organization

  • Mid-point process break allows real-time course correction and reflection

  • Facilitated debrief connects simulation insights to actual workplace challenges

  • Fun and engaging format makes difficult organizational conversations accessible

  • Builds genuine empathy and understanding across hierarchical boundaries

who benefits

Liquid Assets is ideal for intact teams, leadership groups, and new hires who need more than theory to understand how their organization truly functions. It’s especially powerful for organizations experiencing silos between departments or levels, where misalignment, competing priorities, or communication breakdowns limit performance. By placing participants inside a fast-paced, shared business experience, the simulation makes invisible dynamics visible—how decisions ripple across functions, how incentives shape behavior, and how trust and clarity drive results.

Teams seeking to build empathy between management and production roles will find the experience particularly impactful. Participants step into different perspectives, gaining firsthand insight into the pressures, tradeoffs, and constraints others face. Companies focused on improving cross-functional collaboration or strengthening leadership at all levels benefit from the structured reflection and facilitated debrief that connect simulation moments to real organizational challenges. The result is not just insight, but practical shifts in how people communicate, prioritize, and lead.

Designed for groups of up to 150 participants, Liquid Assets delivers immersive, facilitated learning that is eye-opening, challenging, and transformative. It reveals organizational realities that lectures simply can’t capture—surfacing patterns, assumptions, and behaviors in real time. Participants leave with a shared language, deeper empathy, and renewed commitment to building a more aligned, collaborative organization.

clients we’ve helped grow

frequently asked…

  • Liquid Assets works for teams as small as 15 or as large as 150! For larger groups, we deploy multiple organizations to add layers of learning.

  • Liquid Assets takes between 3-5 hours depending on group size and design. Reach out today to learn more about the right design for your team!

  • Liquid Assets requires a large, flat, and open space. Common locations include local parks, the beach, or your company’ headquarters. We can help to advise you on finding the appropriate space!

  • Your group will be divided into multiple roles (senior managers, managers, and work teams) to simulate a real organization. The activity takes place over 4 simulated quarters and your organization will need to satisfy customers, stay on time, and within budget. Sound familiar?

    Our Business Simulations are designed to mirror the challenges your team face every day to create concrete learning and drive change.

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